assumptions

Can I talk about something that bothers me, as an expat?

The assumption that what you say will apply to my situation.  "Privilege," some people call it.  The assumption that you'll easily be able to follow the suggestions.  That anything they say is matter-of-fact and can be done or found without effort.

I've seen pieces on racial privilege, ableist privilege, gender privilege, and others.  An example of racial privilege: "When I look for makeup, 'flesh' color most often matches or is close to my skin tone."  Ableist privilege: "I can assume I'll be able to easily enter and move around any building I want to go into."  Gender privilege: "The default gender pronoun matches my gender."  That is to say, when people don't know someone's gender they will assume "he" more often than "she" most of the time.  Gender privilege.

I call this next one "first-world privilege" or, more specifically, "suburban privilege."

I have some books from the States full of tips and tricks to stay organized.  Many of the suggestions are great.  But others - let me throw a few out there for you.

"Put important to-dos at the bottom of the stairs."
"Keep documents you always need in the front seat of your car."
"Donate it to the nearest charity."
"Don't store cereal in plastic storage containers.  It comes in a perfectly good box, so use that."
"Only buy what you have on your shopping list when you go to the grocery store."


My spacious apartment only has one story.  What stairs do I use?

For nearly a year, we had no car.  Living in Dublin, we never had a car for three years.  Where do I keep my documents then - with my taxi driver?  In my bike basket?

The charities they talk about in these books are the ones that sell clothes for the secondhand market here.  The best I can think of in Accra is to go hawk this stuff at Makola myself.   As if that doesn't create even more stress than giving these things away!

It's so humid here, yesterday we had tortilla chips go stale in two hours.  If it's not the humidity, it's the ants or the weevils.  No, I can't save myself the time and hassle on cereal storage.  Nor any spice, flour, sugar, snack or condiment.  If anything here isn't sealed, it's bug food within hours.  So spare me the lecture on how I can save time when I'm living a daily battle against ant takeover.

Stores here are pretty good nowadays, but there are always gaps.  They don't always have chicken breasts, or cream, or canned tomatoes, or fresh herbs.  You have to buy what's available in case you can't find it when you need it next week.  You don't make a meal plan and shop for it; you make suggestions, go shopping, then make a meal plan based on what the store actually had.


Once our roommate needed to send her passport by Fed Ex to get a visa.  The agent from her work's HQ in the States said, "Just go to your nearest post office, they'll have a Fed Ex counter there."  Are you kidding?  Does she know there aren't even letter boxes on the streets?  To mail anything you really do need to go to the post office, buy the stamps, and put it in their post box.  There are no other places to put letters in the mail.  I've been waiting for the key to my PO box for 10 months.  I have bigger worries at my post office than the Fed Ex counter.


Any time a site says "Stop into your local XYZ."  They don't have 'em here.


I'll add more examples as I come up with them.